British court grants Google's motion to defend itself against lawsuits by Russian TV channels

The High Court of England and Wales has granted Google's application for protection from lawsuits by Russian TV channels. This was stated on Wednesday, January 22, in the distributed decision of Judge Andrew Henshaw.

According to the ruling, the injunction issued restricts the right of the three defendants - RT, Tsargrad and Spas - to start new or continue ongoing legal proceedings against Google for blocking YouTube channels of Russian media resources in any jurisdictions other than the UK and the US.

"The [Russian] judgments, the enforcement of which the defendants are trying to enforce abroad, specify unheard-of, truly prohibitive amounts of fines, which (at least now) do not (in any way) correlate with any compensable damage," TASS quoted the judge's opinion as saying.

Earlier, on January 14, a court in Moscow fined Google 8 billion rubles for evading payments. The company was found guilty under part 1 of article 20.25 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation ("Evasion of administrative punishment").

Google and its information resources have been repeatedly brought to administrative responsibility for violation of Russian legislation. Earlier, on November 18, 2024, a court in Moscow fined Google 3.8 million rubles for failure to remove prohibited information.